


Scents

by grainjew



Series: stared at the sun and the sun smiled back and called itself pirate king (or: loyalty, on the high seas) [12]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, I love him, Loyalty, Post-Fishman Island, and its terrifying, chopper is a good kid... a good doctor, the funny thing about that kind of power is he only has it cause they trust him not to abuse it, the straw hats would toss away their principles for luffy without a second thought
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 02:53:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16966338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grainjew/pseuds/grainjew
Summary: Nothing was really dry here, even in the places with air; it all smelled damp, like fish and the sea and in some specific places like plants after a rainstorm. And since the fighting, underlying everything, the faint tinge of blood.Chopper will never get used to killing.





	Scents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fallingwish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallingwish/gifts).



> this is my fiftieth fic on ao3 which is fucjign wild honestly...how did that happen. the other terrifying thing about this is I somehow wrote it all on mobile in a couple days bc I'm currently trapped in no-computer hell and my wrists are killing me. help

Chopper shoved his hooves through the thick film of bubble separating the air-filled half of this odd room he had come across in Ryugu palace from the seawater side. Water soaked through his fur immediately, weighing him down. He frowned, scrubbed his hooves against each other, and pulled them back out.

They still smelled of blood.

He fell to his back, exhausted, held up his arms and felt the wet drip down into his pelt. Nothing was really dry here, even in the places with air; it all smelled damp, like fish and the sea and in some specific places like plants after a rainstorm. And since the fighting, underlying everything, the faint tinge of blood.

Chopper was used to the smell of blood. He was a doctor, first and foremost: he knew blood, and all of its nuances, and was innured to the sight of a gaping wound. And he was a pirate, too, sailing for the One Piece with crewmates who fought like demons and got injured constantly. Zoro especially always smelled of blood, and Luffy was hardly better. Chopper was used to the smell of blood, but it was different, when it was on his own hooves and it had got there by killing.

“Ah, Chopper, there you are,” said Robin from somewhere outside his line of sight. Her voice was still that comforting kind of familiar despite two years apart, and she smelled like blood, too, but also like old books and older stones. Chopper swivelled around and sat up to face her.

“Hi, Robin,” he said. Then a thought occurred to him, and he frowned. “Are Luffy's injuries acting up? Did someone get hurt? ...Is Sanji being an idiot again?”

Robin laughed her laugh like a bell and sat down beside him, leaned back just a little to send the film of the bubble curving in. “Everyone's fine, Chopper. Usopp and Luffy were wondering where you were, and Luffy wants to leave soon now that he's done depleting the food stores of half the island, so I volunteered to come find you.” She paused. “Well. In the time it took me to get here, their air bubbles could have popped and they could have been consumed by a giant gulper eel, but I wouldn't worry too much.”

Chopper put his hooves to his mouth as his eyes widened. He yelped, “Robin, you can't say things like that then tell me not to worry!”

Robin laughed again. Chopper didn't think she'd laughed this much, or this gladly, before they were separated. He leaned into her side and the sound. “Everyone is so much stronger now,” she reminded him. “I don't believe an eel would pose them too much trouble.”

“I guess so…” Chopper breathed out his tension into the pressure-heavy air, and found himself staring at his hooves again. They would start rotting at some point, if he stayed underwater forever. Maybe the smell of that would make them stop smelling so much like blood.

“What a beautiful room,” breathed Robin, that low wonder in her voice she got when she was looking at ruins or talking about Poneglyphs. Chopper had missed it so much, being apart from her, so he looked up and glanced around again.

He didn't know much, or anything really, about architecture, that was more Robin and maybe Franky's field, but the room _was_ beautiful. It was expansive and richly decorated, clean and untouched by the fighting, with panelling of blue stone and gold and shiny many-colored mother-of-pearl that played light off the sheen of the bubble and the blue-green heave of the water.

“A ballroom, perhaps?” speculated Robin, and Chopper turned his head back to look at her, the slight, curious tilt of her head and the way she bit her lip when she was thinking. “Or some sort of receiving room? I wonder how old this palace is; I must ask King Neptune for any books he can spare on this country's history before we leave.”

“I missed studying with you, Robin,” said Chopper breathlessly, caught suddenly in a memory of warm sunny days on the upper deck with books and cake and discussion, too reminiscent to realize he was interrupting.

Robin took his hooves in her hands for a moment, and then released them. “I missed you too, Doctor Chopper.” Then a line appeared between her eyes. “What were you doing here, though? You're all wet.”

“I was… I was thinking,” said Chopper. “And trying to clean my hooves. I can't get them to not smell like blood.”

“Ah,” said Robin. He knew her facial expressions, minute as they were, better than he knew his own, but for a terrifying moment he couldn't read her expression.

“I was thinking about killing, I mean,” he babbled, in some kind of explanation or to cover his confusion, “is what I was thinking specifically.” He waved an arm, then shoved his face into her elbow. “I know I killed some people in that battle, Robin,” he whispered over a harsh pain in the deeps of his throat, like the admission was being ripped from him.

“Yes,” she said. And then, like she was at a loss, “It was a battle. It was unavoidable.” But when he looked back up, her eyes were sad.

Chopper remembered suddenly that Robin had been killing people since she was half his age, just to stay alive. What right did he have to complain about a few battlefield deaths? Except…

“I'm a doctor,” he said, explained, to her or to himself. “I'm supposed to save lives, not take them.” He looked back down at his hooves again. They smelled so strongly of blood. “But—” he continued, and then stopped, paused, stared at the chiselled set of Robin's face in all its stoic sympathy. Murmured: “But for Luffy, anything.”

“Even this?” Robin's hand was light,  understanding, on his shoulder. Chopper wanted to lean into the comfort it offered, but he owed his captain more than that. Even if it hurt. Even if it went against everything he stood for.

He took a shaking breath. “Even this. Even… even this.”

“Saving lives is a rare and good thing,” said Robin, with a kindness that might have sent him swearing and crying to the door any other hour. “It's the most important thing you do.”

He shook his head. “I said I'd be a monster for him, if it helped, and I mean it. All the kinds of monster, not just looking like one.”

“I understand,” said Robin. “But then, I was already something of a monster before I came into his care. You, though, the doctor, the kindest of us…” She paused. “What is it about him that turns us all against our deepest principles, just to see him smile brighter?”

“I don't know, but it doesn't matter, right?” said Chopper. He grabbed at the edges of his hat, like it could provide him any kind of security. “It scares me so much, but I know all he'd have to do is say a word and I'd murder in cold blood, I'd abandon a patient, I'd break every oath I ever made.” There was a desperate note to his voice he couldn't quell. “Robin, you nearly ended the history of your island just to keep the rest of us safe.”

“I did, didn't I?” she said wonderingly. “And I'd do it again in an instant, if I didn't know how much he wanted me alive.” She turned her face to the ceiling. “Can you imagine what might happen if he cloaked us all in fury with his death or his capture and then left us without any sort of direction?” Her eyes shut, she looked almost peaceful, almost angelic in a certain shadowed way. Her voice lowered to a storyteller's croon. “We would split the skies, rend the seas, pull islands up by their roots. The wind would howl our grief with all the force of a hurricane, and nothing would survive. Not a single living thing…”

“ _Robin_!” Chopper pressed his wrists against his eyelids. “You're scaring me!”

“I'm sorry, Chopper,” she said, and some arms only metaphorically attached to her body lifted him up and placed him in her lap, where she wrapped her for-real arms around him.

“He won't die, anyways,” insisted Chopper, once he was settled. He frowned ferociously. “I'm his doctor, that's my job. He especially won't die before he's King, it makes no sense.”

Robin hummed. “And I'm the archaeologist, who examines the past to point the way to the future he desires. We all made our own oaths.” She took Chopper's hooves in her own again, held them there. “All that's left is the keeping of them, come every sort of fear or the world afire.”

Come death, come blood on his hooves…

“Yes,” said Chopper. In the end, if it came down to it, he would always choose Luffy, and damn the consequences. He would kill for him, and die for him, and keep him alive at any cost, and it was terrifying, but so was any essential truth. So was any Straw Hat, faced with a threat to their own. “Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've exiled myself from all social media so trying to find me there is a lost cause, but I do have a one piece discord server!! come join us it's really chill... https://discord.gg/jYnD2CS


End file.
